Lautenberg Pushing Probe: Did BP Lobby For Release Of Convicted Lockerbie Bomber?

[hatrack]

On Monday, Senator Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat, called on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations “to investigate the role that BP may have played in securing the early release” of Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence officer who was convicted of murder for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Senator Lautenberg wrote in a letter to the committee’s chairman:

"According to recent news reports, BP is about to begin drilling for oil in Libya’s Gulf of Sidra. During negotiations of this oil exploration plan in 2007, the oil giant may have encouraged the release of Mr. Megrahi to help close the deal."

Weeks after Mr. Megrahi was released from a Scottish prison last August, following medical advice that he could die of prostate cancer in less than three months, The Wall Street Journal reported that BP said that a lobbyist for the company had pressed the British government to make it easier to send Libyans convicted of crimes in Britain back home. The Journal reported that Mark Allen, a special adviser to BP and a former official in Britain’s MI6 intelligence service, had called Britain’s justice minister in October, 2007 to say that the company “was concerned that a delay in concluding a prisoner transfer agreement with the Libyan government might hurt a $900 million oil deal it had just signed with the North African state in May, 2007.”

Speculation that British oil interests might have played a role in the controversial decision was heightened by remarks from Saif al Islam el-Qaddafi, whose father, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, is Libya’s leader. When Mr. Megrahi was released, the younger Mr. Qaddafi told him, in a conversation broadcast on Libyan television, “In all commercial contracts, for oil and gas with Britain, you were always on the negotiating table.”

EDIT

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/senator-wants-to-know-if-bp-lobbied-for-release-of-lockerbie-convict/

[drm604]

1. You need to apologize to BP for posting such accusations.

Why do you hate America? :sarcasm:

[OHdem10]

2. We can rant and rave but the sad truth. BP is in business solely

to make money. They would say making deals to grow the business
is simply part of the game. Do what they have to do to get access
of oil. They are responsible to their shareholders. All I am saying
is the system is setup to make such actions possible if not probable.

[metapunditedgy]

3. Not making money for the *shareholders*. Making money for the BP execs,

board members, bribe-receivers, and anyone else powerful and psychotic enough to worm their way into the payout line.